How to fight back at stratospheric heating bills? How to find new ways to make cars lighter? Belgium-based Solvin and Fibroline of France have literally cooked up a new material they call Fibrovin: PVC combined with long glass fibre plating.
Eric Forest, in charge of composite development at Fibroline, even sounds like a mad scientist’s cooking show:
“The reinforced plates are obtained by pressing under high temperature a mix of PVC and additives with glass fibres cut at 50 to 100mm. The PVC powder is dispersed into the chopped glass fibres by an alternating electrostatic field,’’ Forest says.
A little PVC powder, a little chopped glass fibre, and zap it! But be sure NOT to try this at home.
The result: the fibres keep their original size because the plates are produced by pressure and temperature and they don’t pass through a shearing step like compounding or extrusion.
Thanks to that process, the mechanical properties of these plates are very high, similar or even better than a polyester glass fibre plate on the market. This opens new opportunities for PVC in markets such as rigid applications in automobiles where it is not yet really present.
Especially significant for homeowners and businesses, FibroVin can boost thermal insulation and keep your windows from heating the great outdoors. FibroVin plates can reinforce profiles, especially window profiles, reducing or eliminating metal reinforcement.
Even more Earth-friendly is to use natural fibres like flax, currently still in the development stage. But so far, the superposition of flax tissues and rigid PVC films has shown vastly promising results with very high modulus and deflection temperature.
The next step: see if it can compare with, or even replace glass fibre composites. And chalk up a win for Mother Nature.
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